Home › Meat Substitutes › Savory Rice
Savory Rice
3 1/2 ounces of rice 1 pint milk 4 ounces onion 1/2 ounce butter 1 heaping tablespoon chopped parsley 2 ounces bread crumbs Pepper and salt to taste Peel, and slice the onions, and throw them into cold water; let them boil up quickly, and then drain, and mince them. Put the rice into a double pan; boil the milk, and pour it over the rice, and add the minced onion. Let them stew until the rice has absorbed all the milk, which will take quite two hours. Remove the pan from the fire, and stir in the chopped parsley. Season the mixture to taste. Butter a baking dish, and put in the rice, cover with the bread crumbs, and break up the butter in small pieces, and place it over them. Brown as quickly as possible in a hot oven or before the fire.
A milk-braised rice gratin from the meat-substitute chapter, built on the old British habit of stewing rice in milk very slowly. Most of the work is unattended, but the timing and the vessels need translating.
- Weights to volumes3 1/2 oz rice is about 1/2 cup; 4 oz onion is one medium onion; 2 oz breadcrumbs is about a cup of fresh crumbs or 1/2 cup dried; 1/2 oz butter is one tablespoon. A pint of milk against half a cup of rice is a very generous ratio, which is why it takes so long to go in.
- "Double pan"This is a double boiler, not a covered casserole. The gentle indirect heat is the point: milk and rice left over a direct flame for two hours will scorch on the bottom and taint the whole dish.
- The two hoursGenuinely two hours over simmering water, though the rice is done long before the milk is gone. On direct low heat, covered and stirred often, the same thing happens in 30-40 minutes; what you lose is the very soft, almost creamed texture the long steaming gives.
- Blanching the onionSliced onion started in cold water, brought up to a boil and drained loses its sharpness and its raw sulphur. Skipping it leaves a much more aggressive onion flavour in what is meant to be a mild dish.
- Rice typeA medium or short grain, or ordinary long-grain white, absorbs milk kindly. Parboiled or converted rice takes it up more slowly and may not have absorbed all the milk by the end; brown rice needs considerably longer cooking.
- Seasoning lateSalt is added at the end, as the recipe directs; the mixture concentrates somewhat as it cooks down, so salt judged at the start can read stronger by the finish.
- "As quickly as possible in a hot oven"425-450F, on an upper rack, until the crumbs colour, roughly 10-15 minutes. A broiler for 3-4 minutes does the same job and is the closest equivalent to browning "before the fire." The mixture is already cooked; this step is only for the crust.
- YieldServes two as a light main course or four as a side. It is bland by design, and takes well to a grating of cheese under the crumbs, mustard, or a good deal more black pepper than the original implies.
Meatless cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often leaned on rice, milk and breadcrumbs, all cheap sources of bulk in a British or American larder. Savoury rice of this kind resembles the nursery milk pudding with onion and parsley in place of sugar and nutmeg. Such books could serve two audiences at once: households observing Lent or Friday abstinence, and the organised vegetarian movement in Britain, whose Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847. Titles in this vein also found a wider readership during the First World War, when meatless days were promoted as a matter of public economy rather than conviction.